


Love Hurts

by hockeylvr59 (gleefanatic)



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: F/M, soulmate!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24228010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gleefanatic/pseuds/hockeylvr59
Relationships: Paul Bissonnette/Reader
Kudos: 14





	Love Hurts

Your entire life you’d been torn with whether you ever wanted to meet your soulmate. It wasn’t that you weren’t curious, that you didn’t want the type of love that soulmates were supposed to share…no…it was more complicated than that. You see, soulmates were cursed with having to share each other’s pain. If your soulmate got hurt you were well aware. For most people it wasn’t a big deal, bumps and bruises didn’t really translate over distance after all and serious injuries to one’s soulmate were generally rare. 

You on the other hand, from the time you were little you’d quickly found out that your soulmate was a fighter. You’d always suspected boxing or martial arts, figuring that was the only thing that could cause the level of pain you’d experienced. So while you wanted to meet your soulmate, you also hated him for the number of times he’d sent you to bed in excruciating pain. There was only one thing to be thankful for and that was that your soulmates bruises or scars never transferred, it was solely the pain. 

It was during your teenage years that things got really bad, the feeling of being knocked out coming through once a week on average leaving you with no choice but to pop painkillers and crawl into bed early to try and sleep it off. 

You were 20 when you felt pain worse than you could ever imagine. It had been a nice May night when a sharp slicing pain cut through your wrist nearly making you collapse from its intensity. You felt like your hand was on fire and the pain radiated up your entire arm bringing tears to your eyes. When the pain had lasted for almost a week without subsiding you were both concerned but wanted to kill your soulmate for putting you through this. 

As the years progressed, nights of intense pain persisted. During one episode it was the muscles of your stomach, in a few others it was each of your knees in turn. All the while punches to the face were a frequent sensation. 

And then suddenly it had stopped. Well not completely, but now at 28 years old, the pains you’d felt were mild in comparison, pains stemming from just the wear and tear of getting older. In a way you were grateful, but at the same time, you didn’t understand it all. You’d figured your soulmate had retired but as much as you hated the pain while it occurred, now the vast absence of it left you feeling confused and empty. 

At this point, you never thought you’d meet your soulmate. 

____

You had become fast friends with Danielle Pyatt when you’d moved to Arizona and stumbled into the restaurant her and her husband owned. They were clearly soulmates and watching the two of them together made you jealous but also so happy to know that people did find their soulmates even if you felt like you never would. 

You were over at their house for a small get together, playing with their daughters while Danielle cooked dinner and Taylor entertained his friends with a beer out back. It wasn’t until the food was ready that you’d met Paul, and though his presence put you at ease in a way that most people couldn’t, there weren’t any other signs that anything was out of the ordinary. 

After dinner, the guys headed to the basement to play some pool and once you’d helped Danielle put both girls to bed the two of you joined them. 

As you’d entered the room you could hear Taylor chirping one of his other friends about his soulmate before turning the attention to Paul who’d just made a skeptical face about the whole thing. 

“I don’t have a soulmate so I can’t agree…” He’d thrown out casually as if the thought didn’t even bother him. Taking the drink Danielle had poured for you, you curled up on the couch just observing from afar as the boys jostled over the pool table. 

“What do you mean you don’t have a soulmate?” The words had been thrown back at Paul by all of the gentlemen at the table. “Everyone has a soulmate.” Though you didn’t pinpoint it at that moment, looking back that was when the uneasy feeling had settled inside you. Paul, on the other hand, didn’t seem fazed at all just continuing to play the game.

“Guess everyone but me then. I’m telling you boys…she doesn’t exist. The whole pain thing is bullshit because I’ve never felt anything.” 

It wasn’t until a few minutes later when Taylor punched Paul in the arm over something that all of the pieces started to fly together in your mind. With a dull ache settling through your matching arm almost immediately after watching the punch across the room, you quickly burst into tears as years of wondering and memories flooded through you. 

Pushing yourself onto shaky feet you tried to slip from the room unnoticed, your actions failing as Danielle and all of the guys in the room noticed the start of you falling apart. 

It wasn’t until it was all staring you right in the face that it suddenly made sense. Your soulmate wasn’t a boxer or a martial artist, he was a hockey player. And the fact that Paul was an enforcer certainly made tons of sense with the number of times you’d felt like you’d been knocked out. As you stumbled into the wall in the stairwell, tears still streaming rapidly down your face you mused over what you knew of Paul’s career, connecting his injuries to your own pain. 

It was now all clear as day…

Except he didn’t think you existed. He’d said so himself. You’d never thought about it but you’d been a fairly injury free person and so, of course, he hadn’t felt anything on his end of the connection. And while that made sense logically, right now you weren’t thinking logically and with your emotions in control, all you felt was hurt. 

Deciding you needed to leave you tried to pull yourself together enough to at least say goodbye and thank Danielle and Taylor for dinner because as much as you hurt right now you didn’t have it in you to be rude to your friends. A fake smile plastered on your face after wiping the tears away you headed back downstairs only to find everyone just standing there staring at you. 

Before you could even get out the words that you were going to head home, Danielle was stepping closer to you, an apology spilling from her lips on what she was about to do. 

The slap across your left cheek came so suddenly that you didn’t have time to react and in the aftermath of it, all you felt was numb, unable to move. If you had lifted your eyes from the ground you would have seen Paul rubbing at his cheek and stretching his jaw, his eyes as wide as saucers. If you had looked up you would have seen him nervously crossing the space between you, a range of emotions flashing through his eyes. 

But you didn’t look up, instead, all heard was a muttered “fuck…” before suddenly a pair of arms were pulling you against a solid chest and a pair of lips were dipping down to your ear. 

“I am so sorry.” With your brain too muddled to understand just what he was apologizing for you tried to pull away. Your brain was telling you you needed out. That this was all too much to handle. But already your soulmate bond was growing and so your feet wouldn’t move, leaving you with no choice but to collapse into his chest, sobs once again taking over your body. 

Turns out you were the classic case of just how painful a soulmate bond could be. It was messy, it was painful, it was complicated, but yet once found, it was unable to be broken. 


End file.
